UG and A-not-A Questions in L2 Chinese Author: Chun-yin Doris Chen (English Department, National Taiwan Normal University), Li-chen Portia Hong (English Department, National Taiwan Normal University)

Vol.&No.：Vol. 43, No. 2
Date：October 1998
Pages：57-80
DOI：10.6210/JNTNULL.1998.43(2).04

Abstract：

This study sets out to determine whether L2 acquisition is dominated by L1 and UG by examining Japanese- and English-speaking learners' second language acquisition of Chinese A-not-A questions. Sixty students at the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University, together with twenty native controls, were asked to perform two experimental tasks (i.e. a preference task and a restructuring task). The results show that all of the L2 learners were sensitive to the Head Parameter at the early stage of acquisition, suggesting that UG is operative in second language acquisition, but L1 influence is not significant. The present findings not only argue for the UG hypothesis but also provide empirical evidence for a revision of syntactic theory for A-not-A constructions.

Keywords：UG, A-not-A Questions, Chinese, L2 Acquisition

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